Recent Sun Activity Spawns Stunning Aurorae

Over the past several days the Sun has unleashed more than half a dozen major flares including four X-class events. The resulting aurora in some parts of the world have been beautiful. Here’s a collection of recent images taken by Jason Arhns in Alaska and one by Frank Olsen in Norway. In the image above, it seems the aurora is blanketing not only the sky, but the landscape as well!

See more below, as well as a video showing 23 of the 26 M- and X-class flares on the Sun between Oct. 23 and Oct. 28, 2013, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. It also shows the coronal mass ejections — great clouds of solar material bursting off the Sun into space — during that time as captured by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.

Aurora seen over northern Norway on October 22, 2013. Credit and copyright: Frank Olsen.